Pops Concert
Thanks to Mimi, Whitney, Ling, and Jasmine for coming out to watch us play!! :D Heart to Julia for recording our very fail Bald Mountain for us. X__X I have a habit of poring over recordings over and over and over to dissect performances and figure out exactly what went wrong, so this was very, very helpful.
Aiyaaah, I guess it's my fault for hyping it up, but I was expecting this huge, great finale for our (official) concert season. But... um, no. I'm so sorry to those who came only to be turned off by our really sloppy playing tonight. I hope you enjoyed the other groups, though! :D And our Video Games Medley and Magnificent Seven. I thought those turned out okay. I really liked the other groups this year. Freshman orchestra, despite all that hilarious, petty drama on Facebook, placed very well. Advanced brought back warm fuzzies of PYSO with their rendition of 1812.
One gripe I always have about the Pops Concert is the balance and location. I've always been an advocate of a smaller winds section for these Symphony combos. Winds instruments are already quite piercing. There is no need to double, triple, quadruple parts to be heard over our tiny little string section. A lot of the time, the string section is used to cushion the mistakes and cracks of the brass, but with this 1:1 ratio, every. mistake. was. heard. Not to say that the strings were perfect. Nono, we made our fair share of mistakes, but with strings, you have more people to cover up your mistakes.
And the second excuse I have to offer today is location. :P It's always hard to hear, even if playing outside in the sunset with the mountains behind is really quite a beautiful scene. We were already having trouble snapping into the tempos at our transitions. Add to that the adrenaline rush that comes with performing and hinders our judgement and crappy acoustics and the orchestra starts to fall apart. "/
Hopefully, we'll be able to redeem ourselves come Spring Calvacade... >.>
Aiyaaah, I guess it's my fault for hyping it up, but I was expecting this huge, great finale for our (official) concert season. But... um, no. I'm so sorry to those who came only to be turned off by our really sloppy playing tonight. I hope you enjoyed the other groups, though! :D And our Video Games Medley and Magnificent Seven. I thought those turned out okay. I really liked the other groups this year. Freshman orchestra, despite all that hilarious, petty drama on Facebook, placed very well. Advanced brought back warm fuzzies of PYSO with their rendition of 1812.
One gripe I always have about the Pops Concert is the balance and location. I've always been an advocate of a smaller winds section for these Symphony combos. Winds instruments are already quite piercing. There is no need to double, triple, quadruple parts to be heard over our tiny little string section. A lot of the time, the string section is used to cushion the mistakes and cracks of the brass, but with this 1:1 ratio, every. mistake. was. heard. Not to say that the strings were perfect. Nono, we made our fair share of mistakes, but with strings, you have more people to cover up your mistakes.
And the second excuse I have to offer today is location. :P It's always hard to hear, even if playing outside in the sunset with the mountains behind is really quite a beautiful scene. We were already having trouble snapping into the tempos at our transitions. Add to that the adrenaline rush that comes with performing and hinders our judgement and crappy acoustics and the orchestra starts to fall apart. "/
Hopefully, we'll be able to redeem ourselves come Spring Calvacade... >.>